Thursday, April 17, 2014

Crowdsourcing is changing not only the way translations are done, but also the way people think about translating. When I broke away as a maverick translatologist 40 years ago, the notion that useful and usable translations could be done by bilinguals with no training was anathema to the community of Professional Translators and to their trainers in the translation schools. And the general public followed suit in principle if not in practice. I say “not in practice” because in reality there always were many translators who made money as professionals yet were not trained as Expert Translators.

Nowadays the crowdsourcing of translations, either through cooperatives or through agencies, is too prevalent to be ignored or to be dismissed as unacceptable. Even such a universally read source of information as Wikipedia couldn't function without it. Users do make mistakes and go to the wrong kind of translator, but hopefully they’re learning that each kind has its place. The crowdsourced translators usually lay no claim to being experts. Yet nor are they naïve Natural Translators. They are Native Translators, who have learnt by absorption; that is to say by reading or listening to other people’s translations. And they just assume they were born capable of doing it.

The latest example to reach me is Translation Commons. Irish. Let it speak for itself (but with my emphasis).

"A University of Limerick spin-off has gained 5,000 language volunteers world-wide for its Translation Commons platform.
"The Translation Commons matches non-profit translation projects and organisations with volunteer translators, delivering free translation services in to 120 non-profit organisations in 27 countries.
"The platform was launched less than a year ago by the Rosetta Foundation, a non-profit spin-off from the University of Limerick, that works to provide equal access to information and knowledge across the languages of the world.
"The Rosetta Foundation has worked with 88, the most common being English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Catalan, Polish and Arabic.
"Reinhard Schäler, CEO and foundertranslation of The Rosetta Foundation, said: 'Language volunteers have shown that there are no language barriers. The real barrier is access to costly language services which the Translation Commons have brought into the reach of communities that need them most.'
“'At the moment we have around five new volunteer registrations per day, and the most active community is the Spanish one with around 2,000 volunteers. Access to and sharing information in your own language is a fundamental universal human right – one that The Rosetta Foundation is committed to preserve and protect.'”

About Me

Degrees in Arabic and Middle East History. Certified translator and certified conference interpreter. 30 years of teaching translating and interpreting in Canada, Spain and elsewhere, and of research. Now retired in Spain. For more, see 'natural translation hypothesis' in Wikipedia.